In this application, we request partial funding support for the 17th Annual National Neurotrauma Society Symposium which will be held in Miami Beach, Florida, October 22 and 23, 1999. In order to facilitate attendance of a diverse spectrum of neuroscientists, the meeting is held in conjunction with the society for Neuroscience 29th Annual meeting. The program for this meeting is larger than in previous years, and will feature 19 invited lectures, and 12 presentations selected from abstracts submitted by the membership. 45 percent of the speakers will be from outside the Neurotrauma Society. The 17th Annual Symposium will focus on areas of controversy and debate in Neurotrauma Research as well as presenting new areas of research in Neuroscience, rich for translation into the Neurotrauma arena. The theme for the meeting will be "Current Controversies in Neurotrauma: Bench to Bedside." New features of this meeting will be a Point-Counter Point debate on cytokines in Neurotrauma, and a session designed to analyze reasons for failure for Phase III clinical trials in traumatic brain injury, in contrast to their success in spinal cord injury. Extra poster presentation sessions (now a total of 6 hours) have been added, at the request of the membership. The session topics include: 1) Mitochondrial events mediate delayed cell damage and death after CNS injury; 2) How can in vitro models help us understand the pathobiology of CNS trauma; 3) Point-Counter Point debate: Cytokines as mediators of secondary brain damage after TBI; 4) Delayed degeneration and regeneration following spinal cord injury; 5) Clinical Trials-Why have they failed to change clinical practice in Traumatic Brain Injury?